Awful Things

Some Diner Customers Called Their Waiter a Gay Slur on Their Receipt

Photo: kelleysrestaurant.com

After overhearing waiter Blake Butler’s interactions with customers at a neighboring table, two diners at a Kelley’s Country Cookin’ location in Texas allegedly scribbled this terrible message at the top of their server’s receipt: “Don’t want to listen to a f—-t though my whole meal.” It only got worse from there, according to ABC 13, when the manager, finding herself in an “uncomfortable position,” spoke to the customers and apologized. “Instead of having my back,” Butler says, “and being like, ‘That’s my employee. I can’t have you talking about my employees like that,’ she was just, you know, ‘Oh well, it’s okay. I’m sorry.’”

Fake receipts are obviously as common on the internet as videos of tiny hamsters eating food adorably, but per ABC 13’s report, this problem appears legit. The restaurant’s owner, who did not appear on-camera, characterized the incident to the news reporter as an “uncomfortable position for the manager to be in,” adding that “if he were there, he would have confronted the customers about it.” Comments from viewers, meanwhile, have ranged from support for Butler to trollish lines like “I am guessing the kid was being mouthy,” and “it was equally wrong for the young gay man to flaunt his sexual orientation in the faces of those who he assuredly knew found it distasteful.”

Butler has since left the job. He says he was fired, but the owner of Kelley’s Country Cookin’ told ABC 13 that he quit. For better or for worse, the incident led to Butler making the decision to come out to his parents: “I didn’t want them to find out on the news. I just finally said it.”

[ABC 13]

Some Diner Customers Called Their Waiter a Gay Slur on Their Receipt